One arrested after suspected arson at Midvalley Elementary School

MIDVALE, Utah — On Monday, October 28th, Midvalley Elementary School experienced a “power and heat outage” after what appears to be an act of vandalism via arson.

Video of the incident showed “an older male with a grey beard” setting fire to a utility box, which caused the outage.

Later that day, Unified Fire Authority Arson Investigators tracked down and arrested a suspect.

During the outage, Midvalley Elementary switched to online learning. The school notified parents of the change early Monday morning. They said in their announcement that they expected to see disruption to school assignments due to the vandalism.

 

“It’s incredibly frustrating,” said Jeff Haney a spokesperson from Canyons School District. “Why would someone want to damage that school? If it was in an effort to break in to steal, well that’s no better. Why steal from children? Why steal from the local school? When we have this kind of vandalism that forces us to move to on-line learning but also totally disrupts the week.”

Repair crews spent Monday fixing the damaged utility box. The school will be returning to in-person classes on Tuesday.

Currently, authorities say they don’t know the arsonist’s motive.

“As far as why this person selected an electrical box,” said Benjamin Porter, a Unified Fire Authority spokesperson. “I don’t know why they would want to light that on fire, however it would be a difficult fire to start. [Investigators] expect they used accelerants. They found a gas can on scene.”

Related: Holladay house fire that injured 8 was started by child playing with lighter, fire officials say